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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Iran
Spain
Russia
Argentina
Colombia
Peru
South Africa
Poland
Indonesia
Belgium
Germany
Chile
Turkey
Ecuador
Ukraine
Iraq
Canada
Romania
Netherlands
Bolivia
Philippines
Czechia
Pakistan
Sweden
Egypt
Bangladesh
Saudi Arabia
Morocco
Hungary
Switzerland
China
Portugal
Guatemala
Bulgaria
Tunisia
Austria
Panama
Honduras
Israel
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Algeria
Dominican Republic
Greece
Moldova
Armenia
Japan
Ireland
Kazakhstan
Burma
Afghanistan
Paraguay
North Macedonia
Croatia
Ethiopia
Costa Rica
Serbia
Kyrgyzstan
Nepal
Kenya
Oman
Slovenia
Azerbaijan
Sudan
Georgia
Nigeria
Libya
Belarus
El Salvador
Kosovo
Lebanon
Australia
Venezuela
Kuwait
Denmark
Slovakia
Albania
West Bank and Gaza
Uzbekistan
United Arab Emirates
South Korea
Lithuania
Montenegro
Cameroon
Finland
Zambia
Malaysia
Angola
Bahrain
Senegal
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Ghana
Luxembourg
Jamaica
Madagascar
Qatar
Uganda
Latvia
Namibia
Cote d'Ivoire
Mozambique
Sri Lanka
Estonia
Cabo Verde

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Iran
Spain
Russia
Argentina
Colombia
Peru
South Africa
Poland
Indonesia
Belgium
Germany
Chile
Turkey
Ecuador
Ukraine
Iraq
Canada
Romania
Netherlands
Bolivia
Philippines
Czechia
Pakistan
Sweden
Egypt
Bangladesh
Saudi Arabia
Morocco
Hungary
Switzerland
China
Portugal
Guatemala
Bulgaria
Tunisia
Austria
Panama
Honduras
Israel
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Algeria
Dominican Republic
Greece
Moldova
Armenia
Japan
Ireland
Kazakhstan
Burma
Afghanistan
Paraguay
North Macedonia
Croatia
Ethiopia
Costa Rica
Serbia
Kyrgyzstan
Nepal
Kenya
Oman
Slovenia
Azerbaijan
Sudan
Georgia
Nigeria
Libya
Belarus
El Salvador
Kosovo
Lebanon
Australia
Venezuela
Kuwait
Denmark
Slovakia
Albania
West Bank and Gaza
Uzbekistan
United Arab Emirates
South Korea
Lithuania
Montenegro
Cameroon
Finland
Zambia
Malaysia
Angola
Bahrain
Senegal
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Ghana
Luxembourg
Jamaica
Madagascar
Qatar
Uganda
Latvia
Namibia
Cote d'Ivoire
Mozambique
Sri Lanka
Estonia
Cabo Verde